There is no gas, so don’t bother looking for it, and anyway we don’t need it, and it would make us look bad if you found it

Fracking is not the answer to soaring UK gas prices, according to a rigour of academics writing in The Conversation a couple of days ago. I came upon this article quite by chance – I don’t usually darken The Conversation’s door, but the title of the piece was so definitive I felt compelled to have a read. As an opening the authors set the scene: too much demand chasing too little supply as the world surges back from covid leading to rocketing prices leading to “Tory backbenchers [sending] a letter to Downing Street pointing out that UK shale was the key to “50 years of cheap gas”.”

Note: the backbenchers were Tories. Not, I repeat not, Labour or Liberal Democrat. That’s quite important, apparently. Hey guys! The authors of the letter to Downing Street were Tories! The following paragraph took me back a bit:

But these arguments do not hold up. There may be estimates of how much shale gas the UK has as a resource – the amount that may be recoverable – but that’s not the same as proven reserves, which refers to the amount that can be produced commercially at any given time. The size of the proven reserves is unknowable without significant exploratory drilling, and this is unlikely to happen.

Translation: You may think there is lots of shale gas, but you don’t know for sure, and you won’t be able to find out.

The authors then go on to dig a little well for themselves. They report that the British Geological Survey’s estimate of the shale gas resource is 1,329 trillion cubic feet (not far shy of 500 years worth of the UK’s annual consumption). For a moment we glimpse the sunlit uplands. But wait! You can’t recover all that. Since the BGS’s estimate, the flow of only 2 wells has been tested. So we really have no idea how much is recoverable.

Next the authors point out that the only 2 wells to have been tested set off tremors which led to a moratorium which is unlikely to be lifted, etc. Fracking might reactivate existing faults. (This might be true. But that doesn’t mean the gas could not be extracted, only that a few plates might fall off Welsh dressers now and then. Yes, that is an unsuitably flippant response.)

Next:

Even if the moratorium on fracking were to be lifted, it would take years of drilling before production could begin – far from the quick fix that some are calling for. By that time, the UK may not even need the gas: to meet the targets of a totally green power system by 2035 and a net zero economy by 2050, the nation’s gas consumption will have to fall dramatically.

Wow, you can see why these guys are the academics and we sceptics are just banging rocks together. So far they have dismissed the idea that there might be substantial reserves, and anyway no-one is going to let anyone see if there are substantial reserves, and anyway if we let you look it won’t be worth it because even if you did find any it would be too late to be worth bothering with. We won’t need gas in 2050 because by then our unicorn farms will be fully operational.

Next the authors claim that the BGS’s estimate might be too high because the local geology is more complicated than was thought. However, we’re still not sure, because no-one is looking at it. Any interested companies have fled the scene, so it’s game over, dude.

Right, so you ban fracking and wonder why no companies are interested in fracking? Why don’t you ban Scotch and then tell everyone that the distilleries are all shut because they are just no longer interested in manufacturing spirits?

In the UK government’s latest public attitudes tracker, 45% opposed shale gas development, 30% neither supported nor opposed, and only 17% supported it.

I’m sure the public are in favour of cheap energy. If they are against fracking it is because its reputation was pretty well trashed before it even got started. Ignorant and probably stupid people have demonstrated against it, and then, war-weary and triumphant, returned to their cosy homes, heated by a nice condensing boiler fuelled by gas. Why not tell us what schoolchildren think about fracking while you’re here? Whatever they have heard about it, they have heard from people whose only knowledge about fracking is that they hate it, I suggest. My estimate of the average person responding to the public attitudes tracker is perhaps unfair, but I doubt that costs and benefits would have been laid out to them in what we might call a disinterested fashion before the question was asked. Many, if not most, of the public are unaware about the sacrifices that will be asked of them on our journey to nowhere – I mean to Net Zero. No, I don’t have a public survey to prove it.

According to the authors of the Conversation piece, we don’t have enough gas, and sorry, there is no way to increase production. Anyway the government’s proposed system for awarding new exploration licenses in the North Sea won’t be compatible with Net Zero.

Newsflash: modern civilisation is not compatible with Net Zero either.

Environmental groups and academics also point to the International Energy Agency’s assertion that no new oil and gas exploration is required, while arguing that allowing new exploration undermines the UK’s credibility as a climate leader.

At this point I felt as if banging my head against the wall might be a more profitable use of my time. Environmental groups? IEA? The UK’s credibility, kof, splutter, as a climate leader? We don’t need any more hydrocarbons, and anyway, if we got some more, it would make us look bad. We don’t want to look bad, do we?

This news just in: Vlad the Impaler has invaded Ukraine. [If he invades the UK and a tank drives over my foot, I promise not to yell, so as not to make Britain look bad. The world has to think that our upper lips are quiver-proof.]

The final blow:

The message should be clear: the answer is not more gas supply, it’s less gas demand. While taking the UK’s foot off the gas will take time and cost money, in the long term it will free the country from fossil fuel price volatility and reliance on importing a large share of its energy.

If these drips believe that renewables can power the UK, they are the ones who should be banging their heads against the wall, not me. And volatility is not in itself a terror. Why should it be? Volatility implies that at times when supply exceeds demand gas is cheap, and when demand exceeds supply it is expensive. The implication – pardon me if I am greatly mistaken – is that you can REDUCE COSTS BY INCREASING SUPPLY. Either way it is surely better to produce our own gas as much as we can Unless and Until we are independent of it.

The rocket scientists who wrote this piece all receive funding from a shady outfit called

“Unconventional Hydrocarbons in the UK Energy System (UKUH)”

Who they?

The focus of the NERC and ESRC jointly funded Unconventional Hydrocarbons in the UK Energy System Programme is to improve the understanding of unconventional hydrocarbon development in the UK, taking a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to identifying the potential environmental, social and economic impacts. The overarching objective of this research programme is to significantly improve the scientific evidence base on shale gas as a potential energy resource for the UK as well as developing our understanding of the governance, public / political acceptance and wider societal aspects.

The thing I find myself wondering is: suppose there was a, I don’t know, “Solar Power in the UK Energy System (UKSP)” – do you suppose they would get together in the snug and write an article basically trashing the very notion of solar power in the UK? Solar? At fifty plus degrees north? You’re having a laugh. Anyway half the time it’s dark. And the highest demand is in the winter, after it’s dark. Etc.

No. I somehow can’t bring myself to believe in that particular unicorn.

Featured image

A snip of the “News” section of the UKUH website. The astute reader will notice that two of the four images include wind turbines. Only one has anything to do with gas. Perhaps then “unconventional hydrocarbons” actually means wind power?